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Some excellent news since our last update! What started as a side project from Janine working with the Spruce Street Teen Crises Center has expanded to a relationship with New Futures serving low-income apartment complexes, the Lincoln Center public after school program, and one or two other groups who are interested in using parkour teachings to improve the lives of those who could definitely use it. This has inspired us to change our name to Parkour Visions and here’s an example from an email I just received for another potential program:

So, we’re trying to think of ways to make our program “not just another program” that the kids participate in and then forget about when they go back to their own environments and personal lives: We want to inspire them. We want them to find their own inspiration inside of themselves. We want to give them hope. We want them to make their own hope. We want to give them tools like social skills, communication skills, problem solving skills, and conflict resolution skills…and we want them to learn these skills without even realizing it through enrichingly fun and awesome activities!!

LIKE PARKOUR.

We were hoping on being able to use the profits from our general classes to fund these types of reduced cost or free outreach programs, but while the classes are growing rapidly they’re not to that point yet (we’re hoping to move into our space this month which will help).

So we reached out to the parkour community by teaming up with AmericanParkour (more on that later) and entered into a fundraising competition on the excellent GlobalGiving site to subsidize the cost for future programs. That was near the beginning of last month…and it worked We’ve raised over $4,500 with your help so far, earned a permanent place on the GlobalGiving website, and are already being featured in another competition this month for sports organizations called Ready, Set, GIVE.

We’re very excited but have a crazy amount of work to do now, so the site may get a bit quiet We’ll make sure to update those who’ve donated through GG (even $10 helps!) as often as we can, and for everyone else – spread the word!

Train safe,
-Tyson

Project Spruce Street kicked off this week in Seattle, bringing parkour classes to at-risk youth in the heart of downtown!

Janine Cundy, Tyson Cecka, and Brandee Laird headed downtown on Thursday (May 28th) to kick start an initiative that will bring parkour classes to halfway houses every week, free of charge. Lessons focus on much more than just technique, delving into the importance and joy of pride in achievement, respect for training grounds and community, personal growth, and how to face fear responsibly.

“It’s incredibly rewarding to head this initiative,” Cundy said “these kids deserve to have some fun.  Everybody should have something that they are proud they can do, and this gives that feeling to new kids every week.  We hope that the people we get to know through these classes will look to the Washington Parkour and American Parkour communities as paths to furthering their knowledge of self, and parkour.”

The first class went better than expected, with lots of enthusiasm from the students and a surprising amount of natural talent.  There was an immediate recognition of the need for this kind of program in the facility, and so we anticipate this to be a project that will be growing and changing for a while to come. For more information, please check out -Spruce Street’s website-